


New York

by pingou



Series: Snow Patrol is the soundtrack of their lives [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, F/M, I shouldn't listen to music, I'm Sorry, Pining, RO fandom thy name is angst, Snow Patrol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-11-16 17:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11257821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pingou/pseuds/pingou
Summary: Cassian and Jyn loved each other. They lost friends in a car crash. She went to New York City. He's a mess.Blame Snow Patrol.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry I don't even know where this is coming from... It's so hot and I'm thinking too much so I put my iPod on, trying to sleep. Instead this happened. It'll be short, 2 or 3 parts ahead I think.
> 
> Enjoy reading and please review if you wish to.

_If you were here beside me instead of in New York_  
If the curve of you was curved on me  
I’d tell you that I loved you before I ever knew you  
‘Cause I loved the simple thought of you

_New York, Snow Patrol_

* * *

“Cassian Jeron Andor, stop this at once, it’s getting out of hand!”

Through his dazed mind and sandpaper eyelids, the guy tries to assimilate the sight of his best friend, arms crossed on his chest — kind of like a father catching a wayward son in the middle of the night when he should have been in bed. The imagery seems accurate, that is if his Papá were still alive and not buried along his six years old self, Cassian guesses he would have looked like this.

“Leave me alone Kay, you shouldn’t be here.”

His voice has gone rough with disuse, his tongue unusually made slack by the Mescal he had drunk, but of course James Kay gets the message: the tall figure gets hazier but his words, as always, ring as clear as a bell:

“I certainly don’t have to, but your brooding leaves me no choice: as I said, it’s getting out of hand. Sleep is a biological requirement, you know? You can’t go on not sleeping like this, it’s not going to improve your heath.”

“I can’t. You should understand that. Why do I always have to listen your sermons when I fuck up?”

“Would you have preferred Chirrut Îmwe’s platitudes instead?”

“Maybe. It’s easier with him than you, Kay.”

“If you took better care of yourself, you’d be left alone Cassian.”

“Maybe I don’t want that, being alone, even though it’s what I deserve.”

Kay sighs but doesn’t find anything to retort for once. Figures. Cassian closes his eyes again, knowing it’s usually easier like this. He’s drunk anyway, and haven’t really slept for days. His body isn’t his own anymore, it felt so much better when he had her in bed next to him, when the curve of her could curve on him…

“You know it actually wasn’t any better, right,” comes his friend’s monotonous voice, out of the blue.

“Can’t you let me pretend?”

“Do you really have to ask that? Whether I like it or not, we’re playing by your rules here.”

“I miss her.”

“Of course you do.”

“I should have told her how I felt, seeing her from time to time isn’t enough. Why won’t she speak to me?”

“Cassian, Jyn Erso isn’t dead. She can’t speak because you don't… you don’t get to decide what she would say, if she saw you like this. The dead belong to you in a way she doesn’t yet, so you can only love the simple thought of her.”

“It’s hard,” Cassian whispers brokenly, referring to the way it was phrased as well as the fact that it was Kay who just stated the matter of his heart so carelessly.

“Yes, but you can’t deny that even if she’s not here, you’re glad she’s alive?”

“We don’t even know if she’s okay.”

“Considering your current state, I doubt it.”

“Bodhi will look after her.”

“That affirmation is not quite reassuring, but all right. I least I hope they’re spared your destructive tendencies and your inclination to sleep deprivation.”

“It’s not so bad, Kay, I manage.”

“Oh, really,” his friend retorts wryly, his features in focus to convey all his disdain, “you call this managing? Indulging yourself in liquor, barely eating, barely sleeping — not to mention holding an entire conversation with a friend that has been dead for months? Don’t make me laugh!”

“You can’t laugh anyway, I never heard the sound of it.”

“Use your imagination then, Captain Andor, you’re usually good at improvisation.”

“Not tonight Kay, I’m sorry.”

“I am too.”

After that, all is silent and Cassian doesn’t have the strength to summon his friends again. He’s exhausted. Almost crawling to the bed, he lays down, and stares at the empty space next to him. He wills her to appear but it’s no use tonight:

She won’t be coming home.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has to get worse before it gets better, or so they say.
> 
> Read and review if you wish to...

_ If our hearts are never broken and there’s no joy in the mending _

_ There’s so much this hurt can teach us both _

_ There’s distance and there’s silence, your words have never left me _

_ They’re the prayer that I say every day _

_ New York, Snow Patrol _

 

* * *

 

As always, he feels somewhat better in the morning, at least reality takes back its grasp once the first rays of sunshine illuminate his window.

They didn't put curtains. She loathes the darkness and they weren't attached to decoration of any kind, so he didn't see the point. There's a lot of things he finds pointless these days.

If only they didn't take two cars that night. They had all piled up in one countless times before: Bodhi at the wheel, Kay as copilot (both never drank a single drop of alcohol and thus were always the designated drivers), then in the backseat were Chirrut, Baze next to him in the middle while Jyn was usually perched on his knees in the remaining place.

That was how it was supposed to be.

Instead they had split, Bodhi, Jyn and him headed first and the “older ones” would join them later at the restaurant. They never made it. It was a celebratory dinner for Bodhi finally getting his pilot license, but the sirens were the only chant they heard that night. It happens everyday, Cassian knows that. As an analyst, Kay had spent enough time advising against their usual car pooling arrangement, even though he didn't stop it.

In the end, it was the safer way that stopped everyone, leading half of their group, their family to death and the rest of them to their doom.

He decides to remain alone today — his second day of layoff, sorry, ‘suggested vacation’ — knowing that it would be a mistake to spend time around any living soul. He knows Draven is worried about him, that Monica Mothma tries to get him help, but he cannot stand their presence, anyway. Draven thought he isn't quite fit to work yet but it doesn't prevent his superiors from asking about his wellbeing once a day via phone calls, and this prodding is more than enough, already. 

He doesn’t need anyone but Jyn, even if she's in New York.

Among those of his late friends, her face swims behind his eyelids every time he blinks. If he has to be in a certain state of mind to delude himself enough with Kay, Chirrut or Baze, she haunts him like a ghost. When he isn't reliving her tears and departure that last night, her mesmerizing green eyes and soft skin are besieging him. He doesn't know which torture is worse, her pain or her pleasure.

“Cassian, this isn't working, I love you but I can’t settle for this if I want to move on. Forgive me, but I gotta go.”

After living a good twenty dismal years, Cassian has honed innate loneliness into an cast-iron ideology. He goes to the washroom like an automat, and stares blankly at his reflection when he should wash himself.

His agonizing grief is plainly marked on his face. He has let his beard untrimmed and his hair go uncombed, and both are matted. His eyes are pouched and bloodshot, but alert and strangely gleaming in his too pale face. Cassian looks as haunted as he feels, and he cannot bring himself to care in the slightest.

After the drama, he tried to tell her there was so much this hurt could teach them both. He had believed that. No matter what, they still had each other, so their home, albeit shaken to its foundations, was still standing.

But Jyn Erso always was on the run, has been since she was eight. Fleeing and surviving was all that she has ever known. In the end, he couldn't make her stay.

There’s distance and there’s silence now, but her words have never left him. They’re the prayer that Cassian says every day, since the catholic god of his childhood has long forsaken him.

“Come on, come out, come here, come here.”

She had liked to repeat these words to him, to the point they had almost became nonsensical. He is convinced she liked the musicality of them together, like some kind of battle cry. When they met, they were actually the only words they exchanged, they learned each other's name only much later, when they were granted a moment of peace. 

As they had met in a town in Himalaya that has been about to blow, there was no time for triviality. Maybe that's why they'd always failed to communicate from the start. The pull has been here from the very beginning but they've never taken the time to speak to each other, never pausing to reflect on what they were doing.

It's surely why she ran away from him to go to New York.

He wonders if she stares at  the lone neon nights like he can feel the ache of the ocean, coming undone outside the window. Most of all, he misses the fire that was starting to spark when the accident ripped everyone apart.

They are missing everything, from the love to the lightning and the lack of it snaps them in two — quite literally.

Cassian sighs, goes back to bed and pulls the covers above his head. Since his reality doesn't have her, maybe his dreams will.


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kes Dameron to the rescue?
> 
> Reviews are welcome...  
> Hold on Jyn may be in NYC but it's closer than Cassian thinks.

If you were here beside me instead of in New York

In the arms you said you'd never leave

I'd tell you that it's simple and it was only ever thus

There is nowhere else that I belong

New York, Snow Patrol

* * *

 

After almost a week and half of frankly self-destructive behavior, or at least not a healthy one, Captain Cassian Andor is forced to admit that his vacation does him no good at all. 

He's tired beyond words, he's hungry but doesn't muster the will to do more than sustain himself, and rarely ventures outside: some wonderful use of freedom, right, he thinks disbelievingly as a bitter laugh tears his throat apart in the shrine-like silence around him.

He tries to tidy himself with ice cold water and leaves the room before he can drown in his thoughts again. It's a fine day and Cassian knows that staying in wouldn't help with the foreign impressions that make him question his sanity. So he puts on the leather jacket she had been so fond of and ventures out for the first time this week.

His bed has long lost the scent and warmth of her anyway, since she'd last sworn to never leave his arms.

Taking a walk on the beach nearby, all the good that comes with the sea air is poisoned by recollections from days gone by. A time where he wasn’t alone and the ghost of their shared joy seems to follow him around these days. ‘There is more than one prison, Captain. I think you carry yours wherever you go’, Chirrut had declared upon meeting him for the first time. The blind man had uncanny ability to pin people down, and his affirmation has never been so true.

It will be the first time in a decade that Cassian will celebrate Christmas on his own, without exchanging presents with Kay, not to mention the rest of his heart family — he had thought to send one to Bodhi, and he hopes his friend will be able to pass his good wishes along to Jyn, somehow, maybe respond in kind, perhaps, but it is just not the same.

He’s struck here when she is in New York.

He stops dead — and tries not to cringe at the irony — when he catches Kes Dameron visibly waiting for him when he returns to his flat. He lets him enter, of course, even if it’s not fit to be seen, but it’s clear his childhood friend doesn't give a damn about the mess:

“Do you even know what it feels like to be interrupted in my alone time with my wife — Poe is with his grandfather — by fucking Draven at eight in the morning?!”

“I thought you weren’t working.”

“I’m not. You owe me Andor. Everyone is sure you’re gonna blow out a gasket, apparently, so Draven pulled me out of bed to go check on your pulse.”

“I guess I should be honored, then, but as you can see, I’m still alive and well.”

Cassian tried to be reassuring, but Dameron only frowns, mumbling in Spanish, “I’ve seen corpses looking better than you.”

So did Cassian, honestly. For months now, Kay, Baze and Chirrut appeared randomly in his flat looking relatively healthier than him, but he can’t say that aloud, his friend would bring him straight to an asylum and he doesn’t want that.

“Thank you very much,” he answers instead, because since they were kids, they always stuck to a no bullshit policy when it was only the two of them.

“You’re welcome, cabrón. Tell me, why don’t you simply use your free time to go somewhere touristy? Visit the Empire State Building, for example.” 

“I’ve known you more subtle.” 

“You're past that point, let’s be real. Here, we even got you her address, and her work place. Bodhi Rook is currently off base somewhere, but she’s there.”

He hands him a piece of paper, which Cassian takes with trembling fingers, but he doesn’t try to look at it. Bodhi already told him where to find them, when they had reached NYC. He didn’t know where she worked at or what she does these days, though, but he doesn’t want to ask.

“She doesn’t want me. I can’t force her to come back if she doesn’t wish to.”

“Come on, Cassian,” Kes says, rolling his eyes, “you let her go without a fight. You just have to stop being in your own head, mate. You already know what to tell her. You told me and Shara an hundred times already.”

“I can’t find the words.”

“Bullshit. You always have the right words for everything. Stop being a pansy and just go to her already! We’re quite tired of seeing you sink like that.”

“I feel your love so much right now, Dameron,” Cassian says wryly, feeling the corners of his mouth lifting because it's impossible to stay completely serious while talking with Kes, no matter the situation.

“You should, I wanted to tell Draven to fuck off — I’m not his lapdog, you are — but Shara talked me into it. As I said, you owe me.”

“Even if I… make a trip to New York— and I’m NOT saying I will — what will come out of it?”

“It’s up to you, if she doesn’t want to come back here, stay with her there. Seems pretty simple to me, always was, really, but you two were too stupid to see that yourselves: wherever Jyn Erso is, there is nowhere else that you belong.”

And yes, when it's put like that, Cassian has to admit it's pretty easy to say, but it doesn't mean it's not difficult to hear. His friend isn’t the type to indulge to his pity party, though, and it's probably the reason why Draven — strict, fair Draven — chose to send him here in the first place. Apart from Kay, Dameron has always been the only one in the precinct to reach out to Cassian every time and not to fall against Captain Andor’s inner walls.

If he weren't too much ‘in his own head’, maybe he would find it in him to thank his oldest friend. For now, he lets him go back to his own wife and son, and serves himself a beer in the repulsive kitchen, staring at the paper like it holds the cure to the illness plaguing him. Because it's true, as much as he doesn't want to admit it.

Jyn is poisoning his blood, corrupting his mind, but she's also her own cure.

He's not ready to face it yet. Maybe if he drinks enough, Kay or Chirrut will tell him what to do, but for tonight he tries to remember there was a time when Cassian Andor could thrive without Jyn Erso.

Tomorrow is another day.


	4. Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassian and Jyn reunite in NYC.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this angsty story, it's now the end, please review to tell me what you thought of it...

Just give me a sign, there’s an end and not beginning

To the quiet chaos driving me mad

The lone neon nights and the walls of the ocean

And the fire that is starting to go out

New York, Snow Patrol

 

* * *

 

 

New York City in December is erringly breath-taking, as much as he loathes even the idea of being in the Big Apple. There are cheery Christmas lights, laughter and snow everywhere. Since as long as Cassian can remember, it used to be her favorite time of the year. 

As he speeds towards the Kyber Café, where he was told she was working at, he remembers Jyn — and sometimes Bodhi, when he could be persuaded to join them — trying to catch snowflakes with her tongue. His own christmases were vastly different, growing up in Mexico City, but the snow reminded her of her English childhood, he knows, and it used to make her more carefree than she usually was.

He does not see the appeal of the Christmas season right now, New York seems dull and grey without her. He enters the café, and automatically scans the room. Finding her, seeking her out is a second nature, not to mention he is a cop. She's not in an apron or anything resembling a waitress uniform, but he'd know her anywhere, he'd see her even if he were as blind as Chirrut. As always, they are quite the same soul, for their eyes meet without him needing to hail her and cause a scene.

At once, recognition dawns in and horror soon takes its place on her face. But before he can process it fully, his fingers seem to find hers on their own accord. The next moment he knows, she launches herself into his arms, green eyes already shiny with tears that he can’t bring himself to analyze. He, for one, cannot move an inch. He cannot even breathe as she clutches him tight against her tiny frame, scared that if he does, she would flee away from him, like she did before.

He is baffled to see her so expensive but it makes his heart soar in tune. He should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.

“Jyn, please. We’ve been alone long enough.”

Cassian isn't sure anything that passed his lips have made any sense, really — not even a hello, just the simple truth. He ducks his head close to her, feeling his heart race as her body brushes so close to his on the stool. He yearns to hold her again, to bury his nose in the crook of her neck, and to hell with her confusion or other people around. Just to recall how it really feels to touch her, after all this time. Rationally, he knows that it’s only has been but a few months since he could do that, but it seems far longer than this.

But he knows that she will never allow him to do anything more than this idle chat in front of tea, coffee and chocolate, on the counter, like it can be the case between former acquaintances. It hurts to know that there would never be a day when she isn't forbidden to him. Don't you touch her, a voice growls silently into his ear, touch her and you'll only hurt her. Don't lay a finger on her; you'll only make this worse than it already is.

Jyn is not his to cherish anymore since he had failed to keep her with him. However, it’s very difficult to resist the siren’s call of her own sadness. His grief responds to hers, like his fights were always her own, and Cassian wants to carry her burden right along with his, if only she would let him. 

She is seated right next to him, in front of a cup of tea, so he barely has to reach out to touch her pale skin, like he'd been allowed to before a car decided to reap their makeshift family in half.

For her part, Jyn Erso has seldom felt so uncomfortable in her whole life, and she only has herself to blame.

Cassian’s callused fingers had gripped hers in the middle of the café and it was almost like three burials and six months of separation haven’t passed since then. When he smiled crookedly at her, so familiar yet so different from before, she couldn’t help but hug him, no matter how surprised and conflicted she feels about his being here. He, in turn, just stayed still, neither hugging her back nor rejecting her, his body warmth at once unreal and comforting against her.

For a moment, as she hugged him in the crowded room, and was surrounded by him, by the scent and feel she had not known for six long months, Jyn forgot what had happened the last time they had been alone together. She forgot how he'd let her go, forgot how she'd cried, everything, even their friends’ deaths, even why she felt she had to go away in the first place. She had simply basked in the fact that he was here, he was safe and sound — she had just needed the reminder, probably a remnant of an instinct so ingrained she couldn’t stop her reaction.

She should have thought about the consequences before yielding to her impulse, though, and the quiet desperation she can read on Cassian's face, turned towards her— that used to be so guarded in the beginning — turns her insides into jello, because her remorse burns like acid.

Jyn desperately tries to remember the last time Cassian has held her hand. It hadn't been since the day she departed, she thinks sadly, and then, it was merely a courtesy, not because he liked the feel of her fingers entwined with his. She had been so angry at him for letting her leave without even offering to go with her — it's all it would have taken. 

But ultimately he had pushed her into moving to New York City to be closer to Bodhi, the only family she has left. The home she'd shared with Captain Andor was nothing but an empty house most of the time, to be honest.

Her former flame looks bleary-eyed, his body worn out and his face gaunt, in short, he looks as shitty as she. But after his ridiculous comment, he'd shut his mouth, thankfully: they've spent enough time alone, whose fault is that? She seethes with a scorn she didn't expect to be so hurtful, still.

To give herself countenance, she tries to drink the last of her tea and then frowns at the bottom of the cup when she realizes she's already drawn the contents. At last, when she makes it clear she has no intention of doing anything more than staring at her empty cup, ignoring the elephant in the room for as long as she can, he finally gives in and tries again, sighing:

“Just give me a sign that there’s an end to the quiet chaos driving me mad. I can't pull it off without you Jyn, I don't want to.”

“Where did you pick such cheesy lines? And who says I don't manage fine on my own?”

Usually, Jyn Erso is a damn good liar, almost as good as Cassian when he's not playing at having a heart to heart like this. But her retort lacks conviction, her shimmering vision belying the bite of her words, and his smile turns unbearably tender.

“You just did, but I understand where you're coming from. I’m serious, I swear. I want you back Jyn, if you want me.”

“No.”

“You know you want to say yes. We don't even have to leave New York, if you like it here so much. I can find work anywhere as long as you're with me, would you like that?”

It’s really too easy to picture, the most secret desire of her heart. But she shouldn’t say yes, besides it's coming six months too late. Cassian Andor is a nice guy, too nice for a moron nobody like her. He oughtn’t have to cope with her and her shitty package, all the more if there’s a handful of unresolved issues and death between them.

"I don't want us to put our lives in jeopardy, Cassian."

Her voice sounds deceivingly convincing to her own ears, so she doesn’t understand why he does not let it go. He stands, pushing the coffee he hasn't drunk out of the way, nods, eyes crinkling gently like she remembers from happier days, and that's it. She doesn't know why she follows him, when he offers her his arm. The bartender — her boss, goddammit! — doesn't even protest, reminding her that he hopes to see her on Monday, nothing more.

No matter what happened in the past year, Cassian is a fighter like her, he usually wouldn't just stand back and let everything he's been working for fall by the wayside… and it’s clear now that she is his ultimate goal. She doesn't mind, really it's nice to have their own history and not the car crash in front of her mind, but she hates herself a bit for that thought.

Would they even be happy together, this time around, in New York? She has always been on her own, she doesn’t know how to live with someone else, let alone for someone else. Consciously or not, she always ends up struggling against ties, so she is bound to fail him eventually. Like she did six months ago, and probably will again.

Walking home, she realizes belatedly that he doesn't try to part from her at all, and she doesn't either, continuing to lead him to the crammy flat she's currently renting. Just like that. She is doomed, then, for she knows that no matter what she may be thinking now, she’ll end up back with him. In an hour, a day, a week, a month from now, she’ll give in. If she weren't so weak-willed, she wouldn’t be there in the first place, after all. She is hand-tied, and if she’s honest with herself, heart-tied too. 

Cassian is here, beside her in New York. The fire that existed between them might have started to go out, but the comforting warmth remains. She can start with that. As always, he'd been right, and Jyn's is quite tired of being alone. For the rest of the day, for the following night, the following week, the following month… it feels right to be pulled in his gravity, again. 

When they reach their destination, Jyn doesn't feel like slamming the door in his face, literally. Too late or not, it means something — perhaps more than she wants to admit — to have him here. So, against her better judgement, she finds herself leaving her door slightly ajar, so that Cassian can surmise it is okay to enter. While she doesn't know if it's a wise course of action, already her voice betrays her by inviting him in:

"Come on."

“Come here, come here,” he replies out of turn, so on instinct she spans and is startled to see Cassian standing close, his familiar words making her heart flutter.

Jyn feels so grateful to be able to remember the way his arms feel wrapped around her, that she smiles when his beard — stronger than she ever recalls — comes scratching her skin in a long awaited act of tenderness. Focused on his taste, her mind doesn’t register the fact that they shouldn’t be kissing in the first place, not so soon.

Maybe it's the sign he asked for earlier, maybe it was the one she has been praying for after all these months of heartbreak:

The spark of hope.


End file.
